Terra Carnrike-Granata
Andrew Frisbie
The ongoing development of artificial intelligence (AI) offers businesses a variety of options for streamlining processes and operations, but it has also supercharged the incidence and sophistication of cyberattacks. Deepfakes, business email compromise and social engineering attacks have all become more sophisticated as bad actors embrace AI as well.
According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026, AI-driven attacks led by deepfake impersonations and AI-enabled malware have increased 56% this year, and the average cost of a breach stemming from an AI-model attack has reached $6 million. Cyber and payment fraud losses are board-level risks for every organization, escalating the need for strong, modern security systems.
Businesses should organize security into three key functions: attack prevention, threat detection and damage mitigation.
Attack prevention
To prevent attacks, leaders must employ a variety of controls to support strong cyber hygiene, such as multifactor authentication, privileged access management, vulnerability and patch management, advanced email filtering software, and payment and treasury fraud controls.
The rapid growth and widespread adoption of AI has altered attacks, shortening the amount of time it takes to find and exploit vulnerabilities, and as technology becomes more sophisticated, the time will continue to decrease. AI has also been used to create more customized, personal phishing messages as attackers attempt to compromise business email accounts, and AI can help attackers conduct these attacks on a much larger scale.
Alternatively, the use of AI for attack prevention has also accelerated, including AI-powered email threat detection that provides real-time link and attachment assessment and detonation, automated responses to compromised inboxes and continuous tuning services based on threat intelligence.
Threat detection
To quickly detect bad actors and potential cyberattacks, business leaders must integrate 24/7 endpoint detection and response services, centralized logging and monitoring services, AI-powered threat defense and governance, employee security awareness training and phishing simulations.
AI-augmented detection tools have become one of the most widely adopted AI uses in modern cybersecurity programs. These tools enable teams to identify and triage threats faster. For software development teams, AI provides a means to detect vulnerabilities in code that may have previously gone unnoticed.
Elsewhere in the organization, though, employees and leadership alike have raced to implement AI into their work in an attempt to maximize efficiency and to free up time to work on their highest-value tasks. In organizations where AI use is allowed and encouraged, organizations must adopt acceptable use policies, AI tools should be monitored in a central inventory, and AI-generated outputs should be subjected to human review before being used. AI governance in many organizations lags behind adoption, and it is imperative that organizations catch up, because governance provides the guardrails for acceptable AI use.
Damage mitigation
If a bad actor breaks through a business’s lines of defense, there are still ways to limit damage. By regularly backing up systems and data, downtime can be limited and total data loss can be minimized. By limiting lateral movement with separate corporate, guest, payment and operational technology networks, the impact area of an attack can be lessened. By understanding third-party and vendor risk, and running regular tabletop exercises, businesses can be better prepared to close-off certain systems, further limiting the impacted area. And, by being prepared with an incident response plan, businesses can prepare for decision-making and pre-engage third-party experts, such as an incident response firm, breach counsel and forensic resources.
AI integration is growing at a rapid pace, and it is critical for businesses to be aware of not only the risks, but how to mitigate risks and support stronger cyber hygiene. In today’s digital economy, cyberattacks are not a matter of “if,” but a matter of “when.” It is critical to be prepared.
NBT Bank’s Business Fraud Information Center provides a full range of resources and information as well as up-to-date fraud information and alerts to help protect businesses.
Terra Carnrike-Granata is senior director of Payments Strategy, Fraud and Business Resilience at NBT Bank, where she is responsible for advancing a forward-looking payments strategy, strengthening fraud defenses, enhancing customer protection and ensuring the company remains resilient as technology, customer expectations and financial threats continue to evolve.
Andrew Frisbie is director of Information Security at NBT Bank, where he provides strategic leadership and operational oversight of the Information Security, Cyber Operations, Third-Party Risk Management and Insider Risk Management programs.
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